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Kyle Jutte
If Jared Diamond and Bo Graslund were discussing the evolution of human language they would certainly have much to discuss. Both Diamond and Graslund talk about a biological component that must have superseded language. This theory is partly based off of Noam Chomsky’s “generative grammar” (Graslund 107). The idea behind generative grammar is that our brains have developed to allow the foundations of language (or the intellectual capacity for language). Graslund would place this and many other uniquely human abilities and traits in the neocortex (107). Along with the change in the structure of our brains, came a change in our anatomy. Graslund talks about the physical importance of our throat, tongue, and chest as areas necessary for producing the sounds associated with speech (116). These changes would be accompanied by our ability to walk on two lags, or as Graslund puts it, “bipedalism is the mother of human speech” (117). From what I gathered, Diamond would agree with this. Diamond states that “our evolution of large brains and upright posture was a perquisite to language and art” (Diamond 59). Both authors talk about pidgins or protolanguages being the step between our biological divergence from an unknown ancestor and our modern language.
The primary difference between these two authors is in whether they view the cognitive abilities as essential to produce language. Diamond writes “without language, even one protohuman would have had difficulty thinking out for himself how to devise a better tool” (55). By contrast, Graslund writes, “Thinking is not grounded in language.” (106). Their differences can also be observed as the argument of nature vs. nurture. Diamond puts a much higher emphasis on the genetic side of evolution, where as Graslund places a higher emphasis on the cultural side of evolution. The question becomes, did gene mutation or did environmental adaptation result in the development of human language? The question here is not how did we gain the capacity for language (that they agree on), but when did we begin using it?
